If a figment make a figment When the mind's awry If a figment make a figment Need a figment sigh? Every being has his dreams And nonemay be denied! But all my dreams call out to me When my mind's awry!

My ancestors also had an "s" appended to their name, but it was for sheep shagging, not stealing. But they weren't alone in their village. Every male who lived there had that same "s" except for one young man who'd been born with a club foot and couldn't run fast enough to catch a sheep.

My Irish (nee Wales) forefathers came to the fly infested bog country of New Brunswick, Canada with an 's' branded on the end of our name for sheep stealing from wealthy landlords installed by the evil English and their murderous army. They came to Saint John and were promptly placed in quarantine on Partridge Island until deemed fit to be granted a parcel of land and pay taxes on said mire to the Crown. In the British Empire, one does not own land - miss your rent and you are gone. Just like in the old country.

They toiled in the sandy soil and peat for many decades, supplementing the meager crops with wild game and fish and what could be earned from lumbering King's Arrow pine and saw wood. Then, a twist of fate led Gramps and Gramma to Moncton. Tis a family secret which I have shared but with only one cousin after I became Chieftan upon the death of my uncle Charles Thomas. He shall be next, by my word, as the eldest is unworthy.

My other forefathers came from Normandy, France. LeBlanc and nee Melonson. Another family secret about why Mémère and Pépère landed in Moncton is well known but never explicitly discussed. Essentially, Pépère ran away from the seminary three times. The last time, he sought refuge in a good place and his mémère refused to release him to his parents so he landed in Moncton with other family. He, a Master Baker, as trained in the seminary, and his wife "Nellie" did well operating their small store for many years.

I am offended by this talk of subjecting McBrides to hanging or being shipped off in disease-infested ships. I consider such actions to be dreadful wastes of perfectly good resources. McBrides make excellent moving targets for infantry training, superb bayonet dummies, and outstanding subjects for nerve gas experiments.

Too true, Paddy. There was a tribe of them around Skibbereen, and them taking the crusts out of the mouths of starving children during the Famine. Seventeen of the bastards now share the mounds with the Famine victims in the Skibbereen cemetery. We put another forty or so on a coffin ship carrying cholera passengers that was bound for Montreal, savin' that it never arrived.

There was another nest of them that cooperated with the Black and Tans and they were dealt with accordingly, root and branch.

This Shane McBride mog spoke truer than he knew when he said "we McBrides ALWAYS hang together!" The truth is, we hanged 25 of the bastards simultaneously at a mass hanging in Dingle in 1852....this due to many grievous offences committed by the McBrides in and around nearby Dangle, a small community that was infested with the progeny of that accursed name. Guilty of every known form of vice, these stocious chancers and slags had caused grief and loss to decent people all over the Emerald Isle, and the general population finally rose up to exterminate the worst of them and expel the others from our shores, putting them on ships bound for America and Canada. Any who refused to go were either hanged or shot. This fecking Shane gowl is a spanner of the lowest sort, and a disgrace to Ireland.

Between Shame and such as us a Great Gulf is fixed, and where he is it's very, very, very hot and very, very, very cold at the same time. To understand that I suggest Dante's Inferno>, where you will find all of the McBrides queued up for their turn in the middle head in Canto XXXIV.

You can speak of your Dooleys and Tooleys and Flynns, Great louts with long records of terrible sins, But for real human scumballs who ought to have died You'll never find worse genes than from a McBride.

Their DNA's rotten and broken and weak They can't breed a hero, professor or geek ANd their flesh smells like trout that has quite putrified Those dumkopf do-nuffinks, the shameless McBrides.

They are shiftless, immoral, with no sense of class They talk about nothing but beer, tits and ass For a clan whose raw life force is quite petrified Just pick up the phone and call a McBride!

You can find them in slums, and in bars playing pool But you won't find one of them in any real school They are fools, and they drool, and they're fouled up inside, Those jadrool mammaluccas they call the McBrides.

So if you are seeking a lifestyle of pride With honors bestowed, and a smart, pretty bride Don't hang out with scumbags, who never have tried, And flee from the bums who say "I'm a McBride".

I'm sure that if Ms Rutledge were to find herself living in a mobile home outside of Jonesboro, Arkansas, the vehicles sitting on concrete blocks in the front yard would be BMWs and Jaguars, not old Dodge pickups and Ford Pintos.

One on one, Shame? C'mon. One on one. Just you and me. I'll only grab, yank, and twist if I can find something to do that to -- you don't have any use for that part of your body anyway. And I promise not to gouge out your eyes or do anything to ruin those looks that get you by in prison.

You are a sick flippin' dude, Rap! If you were living anywheres near this town, I would call the cops and have you arrested! Snake pulled a flippin' knife on me and Don in prison one time after we get convicketed on the school bus and liquer store robbery job, and that was goin' WAY too far. He tried to kill Don!!! I went flippin' nuts and grabbed him from behind and choked him till he dropt the knife, and then Don kicked him in the mungoberries, eh? It was a bad flippin' moment or two there. Anyone pulls a knife on a McBride and the gloves are off! Know what I'm sayin'? We did not come all the ways from Dangle, Ireland to be done in like strey dogs by crazy flipheads with knives, and we McBrides ALWAYS hang together!

Stay away for a couple of days and a regular brouhaha breaks out. BWL suggesting that some visitors fall in the ranks of trailer trash - and of course, Rap offering to shoot or skewer them. At least Amos kept his head and wrote poetry.

Shame, you ought to feel a blade sliding into someone -- the sensuous feel as it slides in, the grating on bone, the twisting, the rush of hot blood. Come visit and I'll show you what it feels like to be the recipient.

True. My finger got carried away. Any knife is deadly in the right hands, even my little 1.5 inch (that's the big blade) Buck pocket knife. For knife fighting, I've been trying to decide for some time among the Ka-Bar, the Fairbairn-Sykes, and the rondel. All have something to be said for them, especially as you don't want the grip to slip in your hand if it gets bloody or wet (which leaves out my old Buck General, as the black grip would slide too easily).

As a point of interest, I've used the Buck knife in many other ways, including as a froe for splitting firewood, but it's not really a fighting knife as it stands. I have a sentimental attachment to it, as I bought it when I didn't know if I would be in Vietnam in a month or what and I couldn't afford a .357.

The proper spelling is "kris" with one "s". It's a traditional sword or dagger from the area of Indonesia and Southeast Asia, often seen with a "wavy" blade (as opposed to a straight-edged blade). That is, the edges of the blade are in sinuous curves rather like a sine wave. This makes the kris look particularly vicious. I remember seeing them in the wonderful adventure comic, Jungle Jim, back in the 1950s and early 60s. Jungle Jim Bradley and his faithful Malay sidekick, Kolu, often found themselves up against marauding gangs of Malay pirates armed with kris, musket, and a variety of more modern weapons on some occasions. It was the glorious British Commonwealth (Pip, pip and Hurrah, boys!) against the ungodly Communists and the river pirates. Think Indiana Jones wearing a pith helmet...and Kolu in place of Tonto. Marvelously exotic stuff! :)

Your poetic panache is unmatched, Amos. Truly heroic! I think you should be awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Even Penelope Rutledge could not help but be impressed by your literary skills, your keen wit, and your mastery of verbal subtleties.

A mighty wit, contrarian An erstwhile ex-librarian Who now, instead, finds all his fun In firing various sorts of guns And scaring ancients' hoary shades By wavng his assorted blades.

His wit, that once made giants laugh Has come unraveled, now, by half And sad it be to tell you it No more than half will e'er be knit. His brain, once leonine and fair Does now resemble, more, a hare.

Thus falls the mighty intellect That once made every fact connect And, from a fabled mental ruction Resorts today to mere destruction By gun and sword, rifle and kriss! Is not it sad, this tale of his?

You finally went over the flippin' edge, eh, Rap? Time to get some perfeshional help. I feel sorry for yer poor fambly to have to see you like this, but that's what happens to all liberrians eventchewally...too many books and not enuff beer, bong, or broads! It'll drive you nuts in the end.

I think that during her days at University "Bad Penny" had quite a reputation for herself, quite a reputation. At least, I heard about her when I was at Cambridge1. If the stories are true she has superwoman powers in several areas, about which the least said the better. I do not sully a lady's reputation, assuming that she IS a lady and I, of course, give the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps you're onto something there, Little Hawk. It's not snowing here, but it's been raining since last Thursday and isn't supposed to stop until next Monday. That's eleven days of rain. Perhaps my own meager attempts at annoying Ms Rutledge are responsible for this lengthy patch of inclement weather? Discord in nature reflecting discord in the human heart and all that Shakespearian rot.

Heh! Heh! That was interesting, Rapparee. One can't help but wonder if some interbreeding may have occurred between the Irish Rutledges and the McBrides of Dangle? It sounds like they had a number of things in common.

My "lot" as you refer to us, have been lording it over your lot for centuries, if not millennia, and it's no accident, I assure you. You might think of it as a conspiracy, but I think of it as the natural order of things.

Hmmm.... Edward Rutledge (a slave holder) signed the Declaration of Independence and John Rutledge was one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court -- not exactly the sort to uphold your sort.

But enough of that. Penny, a bit of study finds that the "Rutledges" or "Routledges" were from...well, here:

...In the 16th century, we find the Routledges were one of a score of families that many English sources identify as Border Reivers who raided across the English/Scottish border, stealing sheep, cattle and horses, burning barns, etc.

In 1528 an expedition of 500 armed men drove the Routledge families from England into an area north of the Scottish border near Langholm called "Tarras Burn", a desolate region controlled by the Armstrong Clan. Some of these Routledges melded into the Scottish Clans around them, taking the Scottish clan names. Others immigrated to Ireland where the spelling of the name became Ruttledge or Rutledge. A third group drifted back into the Bewcastle area over a period of several decades and took up their old lawless ways. This third group eventually settled on the Routledge spelling of the family name.

Sheep stealing barn burners? Driven into the wilds of Scotland and then into Ireland? Well, the name apparently is geographical and means "red letch." Of course, no one is certain of that (unlike my own name, which translates from Old Dutch as "Keeper of the Sacred Places"). And many of the them eventually became Quakers, although it is most probable that some were expelled from the community because of their war-like actions.

Oh, yes -- "letch" mean "swamp," so it is quite possible your friend Mr. Ballsworthy is right about the reptilian thing.

Oh, my, this is getting funny! Bee-dub-whatever-it-may-be, you have NO idea what you are talking about. None whatsoever. But your vapid, uninformed ramblings are amusing to read. I do not have a younger sister. I do not have a sister, period. I think the person you may be alluding to is my niece, Veronica Rutledge. As for Winston, he is anything but a failure, except in terms of character. He has succeeded quite well in most people's terms, grows richer all the time, and is not what I would describe as "a drunk". This would imply that he is out of control of his life, which is hardly the case. He drinks, yes, but he is not a drunk. Drunks stagger about, slur their words, and wander into the kitchen at 3 AM dressed in nothing but a dilapidated bathrobe. This sorry picture in no way resembles Winston, I can assure you. He is always well dressed and well groomed, always articulate, dangerously handsome in a cold sort of way, and almost always insufferable, but definitely in command of all his faculties. He buys tasteless items like the elephant stool and the almost naked Mata Hari portrait just to annoy me. The only thing that could possibly persuade me to move to Arkansas, let alone to some godforsaken North American trailer park, would be if the rest of the world become completely uninhabitable due to killing levels of radiation...and then I'd still hesitate. There ARE worse things than death.

Don't delude yourself too much, Mizz Rutledge. From the sound of things, your Twillingsgate is becoming more like a rural Arkansas trailer park with each passing day. You already have the ho-bag younger sister, the drunk failure of a husband, and a house full of flea market gee-gaws. You'd fit right in down at the Twin Pines Mobile Home Park.

Yes, well, I suppose you can add it at the end of the *very* long list of other things you've been wrong about in your life, Mr "ell". Pomposity, by the way, is not necessarily such a bad thing, providing it is sufficiently justified by both station and inheritance. My "lot" as you refer to us, have been lording it over your lot for centuries, if not millennia, and it's no accident, I assure you. You might think of it as a conspiracy, but I think of it as the natural order of things.

By the way, Penelope, I found your response to my post about my encounter with Mr. Krueger quite touching. In fact, it has caused me to me to reconsider my estimation of you and the rest of the Twillingsgate lot as little more than a bunch of pompous, inbred, aristocratic douchebags. I may have been incorrect about the "inbred" part.

Back in the Olde Armye you waited in line and when your turn came you walked briskly up to the Company Commander (or designated officer paying), halted, saluted, and said, "Sir! Private (or whatever) [insert your surname here] reports for pay!" S/he would salute back, count out your pay (in cash!), you'd sign the pay voucher, salute again, do a left face, and face all of those who wanted their deduction from your pay (donations, etc.), and march out with a couple of bucks to last you the rest of the month if you were lucky.

There were Big Guys with Big Guns standing around waiting for you to do something foolish.

A thigpen is a pen used by a thig to write down important things. As most thigs are illiterate, however. thigpens are not that common. Because of this they have become valuable collector items. A thigpen in mint condition can go for as high as $1,200 on Ebay.

Yes, I suppose a lieutenant colonel would be the battalion paymaster, but he'd need a pretty big bag of coins. Assuming that a battalion has around 500 men who are paid an average of around $2,000 once a month, that's a million dollars! If I were a lieutenant colonel, I sure wouldn't want to carry a million bucks worth of coins in a damned thigpen. I'd want a checkbook. Or a stack of prepaid debit cards.

Mass murdering psychopaths are among the least of my worries right now, Mr KrUEger...with the "U" first...so kindly toddle off, would you? I already have to deal with an arrogant brute of a husband who thinks he is Britain's authority on everything, an insane journalist (Hector Ballsworthy) who hounds my family members from pillar to post whilst composing ludicrous theories about reptilian bloodlines in the upper classes, and a niece who is attempting to make Miley Cyrus look like a modest and virtuous young woman by comparison! You may think that you have problems, sir, but you have no idea.